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The Armor A80 is the first device from Silicon Power I've seen, and it's impressive. The drive is waterproof, rugged, and most importantly very fast, according to my testing. Despite all that, it still manages to be as compact as other portable drives that are based on 2.5-inch standard internal hard drives. It's also bus-powered.

The only shortcoming the A80 has, if any, is that it uses A-male-to-A-male USB cable, which is harder to run across than regular A-male-to-B-male USB cable. To make up for this, the drive comes with two cables, one of which is short enough to tuck inside a groove on the drive's side.

If you can live with this odd choice of the USB cable, at a street price of around $135 for 1TB, Silicon Power's Armor A80 makes an excellent portable hard drive to use on the go or at home.

Design and features
The Silicon Power Armor A80 looks like a typical portable drive. Measuring 5.5 inches by 3.7 inches by .7 inch, the drive is compact. It's also very light, weighing just about half a pound. On one side, the drive has a deep groove that holds its short 4-inch USB 3.0 cable. This cable-carry design makes the drive very convenient to use on the go with a laptop. The drive also comes with a second 3-foot USB 3.0 cable in case you need to connect it to a desktop.

Unlike standard USB cables, the A80's USB 3.0 cable comes with an A male plug on both ends, meaning you can't use a standard USB cable with the drive. This minor shortcoming is more than made up for by the fact that this design allows for faster connecting since you can use either end of the cable with the computer or the drive.

On the other side, the drive comes with one A female USB 3.0 port for both data and power. This port comes with a watertight rubber lid to keep water and dust from getting into this drive. With a casing made up of aluminum, plastic, and rubber, the A80 meets the IEC 529 IPX7 waterproof standard, meaning it can withstand submersion in water for up to 30 minutes at a depth of about 3 feet. It also meets the U.S. military drop-test standard MIL-STD-810F 516.5, which dictates that it will survive being dropped from a height of about 4 feet during transit.

I actually tried submerging the drive in the kitchen sink overnight, leaving it under a running showerhead for about half an hour, and dropping it from the level of my belt a few times while walking, and the drive indeed survived it all. The cover of the drive is susceptible to dents and scratches, however, so you probably don't want to do these things to your drive.

There's nothing to setting up the A80. The drive is preformatted in the FAT32 file system and all you need to do is plug it into a Mac, Windows, or Linux computer and it's ready to be used. Note that FAT32 works across platforms but it can store file sizes up to only 4GB. If you want to store larger files, you will need to format the drive into NTFS (Windows), HFS+ (Mac), or Ext3 (Linux), to use with each of the platforms exclusively.

CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
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